AT&T still dealing with U-verse server outage problem
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(Updated 2:35 p.m.) AT&T says it continues to work around the clock to fix a server problem that it says has left less than 1 percent of its U-verse phone, Internet and TV customers without service, but that hasn’t quelled the anger of customers who say they’ve been without service for as many as three days.
U-verse customers continue to take to Twitter and Facebook to vent about the outage, which the company says affects fewer than 6,000, although there are reports of an outage as far away as Texas, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Florida.
“#uverse is STILL out … A little complicated to run my online store without Internet. Why is Internet not working in SC @ATTCustomerCare ,” asked Samantha Elder @YelloHypeInvite
“Two days now and all we get is “problem with a server”? You can rebuild a server in a few hours. Wonder what’s really going on? #uverse,” asked Jason @maynard001 on Twitter
In an update Wednesday afternoon, an AT&T spokesman said the problem is not widespread. “This issue currently affects less than one percent of our U-verse subscribers, but that is too many and we are working hard to fix this,” spokesman Lance Skelly said in a statement to the AJC. “We are making progress in resolving the issue, which is related to servers supporting U-verse, and are working to determine when service will be completely restored. We apologize for this inconvenience.”
Some customers reported that problems with U-verse began Monday, although AT&T said it was difficult to say exactly when the problems began. Staffers are occasionally responding to individual complaints on its Facebook page.
Sarah Castle posted on Facebook: “way to go AT&T i have been without internet for 30 hours now. I only have 3 grad school papers due this week.”
In response to Castle and others, AT&T has posted the following statement with recipients’ names changed: “We’re so sorry about the frustration, Sarah. We have identified an issue with a server that supports U-Verse and are working around the clock to resolve the issue. Please know that we appreciate your feedback. Some impacted customers may be able to reboot their residential gateway to restore service. Thank you so much for your patience.”
And Bounty Blake Moia on Facebook still wants to know: “Do we get any sort of rebate on our bill for this atrocious and appalling service?” So far, AT&T hasn’t addressed that issue.
What do you think AT&T, or any other service provider in a similar situation, should do to “make it right” with its customers?
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160 comments Add your comment
John
January 23rd, 2013
4:16 pm
My U-verse service (tv, internet & phone) in upstate South Carolina went down Monday night and is still out. I received an automated call yesterday afternoon telling me it was back up but it wasn’t. First time in over 2 1/2 years that I’ve had any service problem with U-verse.
gapeanutgal
January 23rd, 2013
4:19 pm
Well – let me tell ya. I contacted Comcast today and am switching my service. Not only are we not able to access the internet for our small business, but apparently when they “upgraded” our modem a few months ago, they started billing us on a separate account, which I have no nmbr for and they refuse to help me when I call because I cannot validate an account I never set up. They have been double billing us now for 2 months. You’d think they could have just mentioned the service was down. Can’t wait to see the Comcast truck pull up to install!!!
customer 998
January 23rd, 2013
4:21 pm
we are a customer in raleigh nc and our service has been out for about 2 days now. this is becoming a problem. Failed an exam because i couldnt turn it in because of internet oa uttage. I really hope this problem will be fixed soon so we can get back to buisness. I am still shocked that a company so large would have this problem for so long and would let so many loyal customers down with crumby customer service
Terri
January 23rd, 2013
4:32 pm
Mine was out for 2 days, then today i had to have a service tech to house bcs they turbned off all access to my boxes in 2 rooms and it was a BIG mess
Eric Rodgers
January 23rd, 2013
4:32 pm
My service was restored earlier today.
Stuck in the Country
January 23rd, 2013
4:33 pm
Just be glad you have options for your internet service! I would LOVE to have U-Verse (even though it’s been down). Our only options are dial-up and satellite. I live in the greatest country in the world and don’t have good options for internet, phone, and tv. So – if you have options – BE THANKFUL!
Richard from Raleigh
January 23rd, 2013
4:34 pm
I thought it best to cancel service as of the end of the month. U-Verse internet went out Monday 1/21/2013 at about midnight and is still not restored. AT&T representatives have no useful information, and always speak as though the problem will be solved soon, which of course did not happen.
Terri
January 23rd, 2013
4:35 pm
OHHHH and I was told by customer service after being on with them for 2 hours last night that I was going to be charged for the guy to come out, this was my problem and that I was affected by the outtage weven though i had internet and cable in one room, she wouldn’t admit to there being a problem. She told me all my lines were dead, there was no “reset button” that she could try. The tech certainly took care of things with the reset button today!! Amazing how the lady last night didn’t want to help me.
I have had several problems with this company, unfortunately they are the only ones i can use
ex bellsouth dsg tech
January 23rd, 2013
4:39 pm
Lost service about half the day Monday in Atlanta. After that ok. For some reason Uverse will constantly throttle back user speed. have to reset the NVG510 about once every two days. We have a six meg profile but during inactivity the profile is changed to 3mb or even slower. When you resume surfing you get the slower speed until you reset the modem. I am an ADSL dude, don’t know much about IPDSL.
bill
January 23rd, 2013
4:40 pm
No tv no internet no land line for two days so far . Help desk no help lyeing to you.Said would send serviceman ,didn’t all they say is reboot opps that didn’t help sorry service.bad pr
Debbie
January 23rd, 2013
4:42 pm
I have had no service since early Tuesday morning. I have called three times and chatted online once with AT&T. I have gotten 4 different answers as to why there is an outage. I was told this morning that 2 million customers have no service. Last night I was told that the network had been hacked. Apparently, the CSR’s don’t know what is going on. I just want my service back and a prorated bill for this month.
jeffrey
January 23rd, 2013
4:47 pm
i live in gadsden alabama ,have had service for 7 months no problems till now .they could at lest tell you when it will be fixed.and a refund to my account would be great.since my service has been off for 48 hours. yall need to work on the customer service problem you have!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i think you will lose a lot of customers to comcast &direct tv..better get on the ball &fix it….think about it my self if not fix quickley..
Erwin
January 23rd, 2013
4:47 pm
My service was installed just today and within minutes of the technician installing it it stopped working. We called him back and he said it was a broadband outage and was unknown when it would be fixed. I contacted their support using the online chat while at work. The support person (Avil, somewhere outsourced abroad) spontaneously offered to credit my account $20 for the outage. That is nice but what I really care is that it works and if there is an outage what a reasonable downtime we should expect. Avil had no response.
Now why did they install it in the first place if they already knew they had an outage??? Why not postpone the installation ??? Sounds like the left arm does not talk to the right arm.
If they cannot even communicate internally don’t expect them able to communicate to their customers… TOTALLY unacceptable
Rob in Atlanta
January 23rd, 2013
4:54 pm
All equipment and services will fail at some point. We depend on our internet for business and we use Comcast. Our internet goes out so frequently that we bought a monthly service with Clear for $45.00. It is wireless and when we lose Comcast we just switch over as long as we need to and then back. Our download speeds are only 4 to 5 MB (compared to 80) and up is usually around 1 (compared to 12). But we can do everything we need to. There are lots of possible ways to build in redundancy. We didn’t go with At & T or Verizon (or cell phone carrier) because of the data charges. I don’t think we pay extra for unlimited data with Clear. This has been an absolute life saver many times. I know this isn’t reasonable for everyone. But for a business this is very cheap insurance. Really, AT & T should think about letting their wireless customers connect while there U-Verse is down. Simple, if your wired is down no data charges on your wireless. Perfect redundancy. Yelling at the person on the phone for the service provider really accomplishes nothing. Just make a plan.
johnny fairplay
January 23rd, 2013
4:54 pm
Working for a consulting company at billable rate of $250 dollars an hour that I can’t do since the outage. Wonder is they will compensate me $250 x16 hours. A bunch of incompentant jerks, i’m done with them,they can kiss it.
Barbie
January 23rd, 2013
5:01 pm
We were to have installation done Mon the 21st, all the re-wiring was done, about 4-5 hrs. worth of work for the tech, and no AT&T service. I took off work yesterday afternnoon, they came back tried again for about 31/2 hrs., nothing. Were supposed to call or come back out this morning, my dad went to my house for me, they never called or came. I sent my dad home and made a few phone calls…. So now they say its fixed they will be there in the morning between 9-11. I had the techs manager #, which I was told to call, took me 3 times and a few hours to get him,he never did return any of my voice messages, he said he would try and get someone out this afternnoon he would call me back, that was apx. 2 hrs. ago, havent heard anything yet. Trying to stick it out and give ATT a chance, but if its a no go after tomorrow, I will have them hooking me back up to my old carrier. NO phone, internet, TV for 3 days is long enough! The techs and my sales person have been very nice and are doing everything they can, cannot say as much for the landline? manager.
Summer
January 23rd, 2013
5:21 pm
Mine has been going out every night at 8pm and turning back on sometime in the morning. Too bad I dvr primetime shows and not daytime shows. Why can’t it go out while I am at work and not when I am home and actually have time a programs to watch?
Chase
January 23rd, 2013
5:21 pm
Really??? reboot three times in a row? What is that going to do exactly? Copout! An IP address is held by a lease. Until that lease expires and a new one is renewed, you can reboot 5000 times and it wont do nothing but ummmm reboot!. LMAO
Abe
January 23rd, 2013
5:25 pm
I have been without service since Monday 11PM. Called ATT Monday AM-got automated service and had to leave a phone number where they will notify me when the problem is resolved. Received a call around 7:30 PM Tuesday but there was no service. Called again and a nice person told me they had no complaints about service problems in NC,. I sent him to check and he came back and told me they will fix it within 12 hours. We are now at 42 hours outage and nothing. I tried to post on their facebook page and ATT immediately remopved the posting. Seems you can post only if you say nice things about them.
Joe
January 23rd, 2013
5:28 pm
Looks like back to Time Warner for me…………………….
Bedbug
January 23rd, 2013
5:34 pm
I know it’s a big loss for folks, but some of you really were un-prepared and don’t really know how it works. First of all, residential service is not a ‘Six-Sigma” service. Read your Terms of Service. Many people are trying to run a business off a residential account. If you depend upon having constant Internet access, well then you need to get Business-class service and get the appropriate service guarantees. And, you’re going to pay more, a lot more. No sane business is going to guarantee near 100% up-time for residential Broadband customers, some of who are only pay $10 a month. Also, you students who can’t turn in term papers or tests, well, honestly, you should have considered having a backup plan. I mean, a lot worse could have happened to your computer besides losing Internet access. You need to back up your papers and know how you can get access to other computers or online access besides your home. I’m not excusing the actions of Broadband providers and their associated customer service issues, but folks really need to understand what they are getting into in the first place.
Kimmi
January 23rd, 2013
5:34 pm
I have no phone, tv, or internet. Been down completely since 5am Jan 22. Called was told would be up 6-12 hours. Got a call from automated system at 547pm on the 22nd. Still out. Was told by agent that 15 states effected and no idea when it would be resolved. Until now, no problems with ATT, but this is a major hiccup. Shows the windows of opportunity not only with service, but also with communications. Frustration is an understatement right now!!!
Virtual Worker
January 23rd, 2013
5:35 pm
I am a 100% virtual employee and have had issues since late Monday afternoon. (not to mention I lose service at least three times a month for an average of two to three hours each time) Thank goodness I have a Verizon wireless hotspot so that I can still connect to work and get my job done. Perhaps I should send AT&T my Verizon bill for the data usage overage I am going to incur due to this and deduct that amount from my monthly AT&T bill – you can bet I am not going to get any kind of a rebate from them for this inconvenience. I am stuck with them for my ihternet and phone service as there is no other provider where I live. I am one of the unfortunate few who AT&T does not care about because they ‘know’ I have no choice but to use their service. When my contract ends you can bet I am going to check with Verizon to see if they offer an unlimited data package for the wireless hotspot. If they do, it’s bye-bye AT&T
Annette
January 23rd, 2013
5:48 pm
In Cary NC. Down since 9PM Monday. Called Retention dept. this afternoon. Most effective after having talked to about 4 escalated support people in Texas, Florida, etc. I thought most of the people down were customers who were at least 3 years or more with UVerse on old node equipment that could not accept the software repair patches. I was told by the most recent support staff that it could happen even to a new customer which blew my hypothesis (unless they were attached to an old node). Nonetheless, I asked to cancel my service and reinitiate a new account which I assumed would port me to at least working equipment. That would require a)$49 b)install date of no sooner than Jan. 31st and c)would lose anything I had saved on my DVR… They came back with a $75 credit, one year of full verse tv channels, 24 mb upgrade to my 12 mb etc. I am still down but not so mad. My next door neighbor has uverse and never went down. I am piggybacking off her network to access email…
Christy
January 23rd, 2013
5:52 pm
Im in South Carolina and still without cable or internet….
Lady Jada
January 23rd, 2013
5:55 pm
AT&T installed U-verse, then blocked my work email! For several weeks AT&T would not call me back, but COMCAST did!!! Fantastic customer service and follow-up by Comcast. I cancelled AT&T and am very, very happy. Wish I had called Comcast sooner. 1-800-266-2278 is number for Comcast residential. Comcast business service is 610-234-3728.
Alan
January 23rd, 2013
5:55 pm
4 days with this issue. Sometimes the Internet works sometimes it does not…XBOX Live won’t work so no online gaming. I was on the phone with ATT Tech support and the call disconnected and the agent didnt call back. I’ve been on hold 110 minutes trying to call them back….I pay over 200 dollars a month for the Internet,TV and home phone with UVERSE…..Its great when it works, however ATT needs to work on its service recovery plan and the ability to fix issues in a timely fashion…..Come on fix it. We sent many men to the moon and you cant fix a server….Geeezzzzzz!
Kristen
January 23rd, 2013
5:56 pm
Uverse has been out in Orlando Florida for 3 days now. It is hard to work from home when I cannot access the internet. My business is suffering because of this issue. It is spread out over at least three states and it’s 1 percent of their customers? Three states seems like a big deal to me.
Funkisha
January 23rd, 2013
6:02 pm
Every so often I get it right, and it appears that my instinct to avoid U-verse was the right call.
FWIW I also avoid Charter Cable like the plague. They keep sending me junk mail solicitations to sign up for their “bundle”, but seeing their repair crews in my neighborhood nearly every day and listening to my unhappy Charter customer neighbors is all I need to know.
Dale
January 23rd, 2013
6:11 pm
I’m in Central Florida and service has been out over 2 days. I’ve been a Uverse customer since inception and have been pleased with it all. But this is killing my small business and the fact that I can’t get any type of answer as to when service is to be restored is very troubling. No one has a answer.
Delphine Lowe
January 23rd, 2013
6:18 pm
I am an AT&T stockholder! Vacationing in Ft. lauderdale. My husband teaches via the net! This is an outrage, no service since Tues. a.m. You should be ashamed!
Sharon
January 23rd, 2013
6:21 pm
I am in Austin Texas and we have been without for two days. This is a very widespread issue. ATT is not being forthcoming. And a server can be replaced. It does not take this long.
DoubleTheFun
January 23rd, 2013
6:23 pm
No sympathy for those losing money due to downtime. I pay for a backup connection because Comcast goes out on a regular basis here so I switch to DSL until it’s fixed. If an Internet connection is essential to your business then why don’t you have a backup connection?
David
January 23rd, 2013
6:41 pm
We have 2 isp’s at the house. ATT dsl(Uverse not available yet) and Clear. My wife works from home and the ATT was ok but for a 1 week period it crapped out for about an hour daily. Couldn’t have that for her work, went to Clear, same download speed as ATT and faster upload. No downage for several years. Plus if you buy the equipment, modem was $79, you’re month to month, no contract, and it’s $40 something a month. Great backup for cheap.
DawgNole
January 23rd, 2013
6:45 pm
Fan
January 23rd, 2013
4:11 pm
Change over to Comcast and in 6 months, maybe a year, AT&T will have it fixed and come begging for you to take them back. Simple.
__________________
You probably wouldn’t be able to stand Comcast for “6 months, maybe a year.” They’re the epitome of greedy corporate giant that cares little if any for its customers.
Rob in Atlanta
January 23rd, 2013
6:50 pm
Sometimes the comments to these articles are worth reading. You can learn something. For others they just want to vent. To all those venting try reading the constructive posts and reduce your future need to rant. Make a plan. Any provider will fail at some point. Read above to solve the future problem now.
Donald
January 23rd, 2013
6:50 pm
If you think U-Verse is bad….try Comcast…! There is a Comcast Truck on
my street at least twice a week because their service stinks. And try to call
Comcast on the phone. Get ready for a 45 minute wait til a live person
answers your call.
BigEyes
January 23rd, 2013
6:52 pm
Hello!!!… “1 percent”. I don’t really believe in the “server problem”. Does AT&T dont have server redundancy or backups. They have a lot of problems. In fact, they change some parameters to mask the problem and it is for this reason that some applications are still not working like XBOX Live. By the way, the Customer Support it’s just so lame. It’s just a waste of time.
Marci
January 23rd, 2013
6:52 pm
My service in Miami has been down since 2 AM Monday. All my neighborhood still does not have service. After talking to co-workers, scattered throughout South Florida, they told me their service is down, too. It seems to me that many of those 1% may be in our area.
Gary
January 23rd, 2013
7:01 pm
Have been without my office internet since Monday night-the UVerse customer service is horrible-they simply act like they do not care that my business is totally disrupted. I have 10 employees and we can only get some things done with no internet/email access
DawgNole
January 23rd, 2013
7:10 pm
Lady Jada
January 23rd, 2013
5:55 pm
AT&T installed U-verse, then blocked my work email! For several weeks AT&T would not call me back, but COMCAST did!!! Fantastic customer service and follow-up by Comcast. I cancelled AT&T and am very, very happy. Wish I had called Comcast sooner. 1-800-266-2278 is number for Comcast residential. Comcast business service is 610-234-3728.
_____________________
For every happy-with-Comcast story like this one, there must be 100 nightmares. For me, it was 22 years of nightmares with Comcast TV service before I finally had enough and severed the cord. Went with DirecTV and haven’t looked back. More channels, cheaper, NFL Sunday Ticket, and only lose signal for a few minutes if BAD thunderstorm is in the area–which rarely happens due to our perepetual drought over here in east central Georgia.
Richard A Secor
January 23rd, 2013
7:13 pm
The problem is regarding an update they sent out around 10 PM Eastern on January 21st, 2012.
It started out with dropped MTU (package size) settings. Usually near or at 1500 they were forced down to a maximum of 576! This caused problems with gaming (see xbox.com), audio/video streaming, other larger packet intensive operations (such as uploading or downloading here and there), and packet loss.
While it appears that the MTU settings issue was resolved, a secondary issue cropped up (most likely related to the first issue).
What is the second issue? I have no idea, but my guess is that some of the systems did not want to take the update which was to fix the previously broken (MTU) update.
Matt
January 23rd, 2013
7:17 pm
@The Old Geezer Yeah, well this isn’t the 1950’s anymore grandpa. You’re lifestyle is becoming obsolete, and will be deleted from the system shortly.
Matt
January 23rd, 2013
7:18 pm
@Richard Secor – The MTU is still an issue for me.
AT&T U-verse outage | Review your ISP
January 23rd, 2013
7:20 pm
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Me
January 23rd, 2013
7:26 pm
Only 6,000 customers? 6000 customers you migrate to existing servers and run everything a bit slower. It’s bigger than that. What about backup, redundant systems, chaos plans, and everything small businesses are smart enough to have, but not giants, obviously. By the way, I’m sitting at a comcast-served home and their internet is WORKING!
scd7
January 23rd, 2013
7:27 pm
To those of you who say “step away from your computer and get a life now and then” do realize there are people who 1) rely upon their internet / phone service to run a business or work from home. If you work from home and don’t have an office you can go to, you don’t work and don’t get paid. If you have a store with Uverse and the phone doesn’t work, your customers can’t call you. If you don’t have internet, you may bot be able to run credit cards, receive online orders, etc. This is far more critical than just surfing the web and reading email for many people.
A several hour outage is understood from time to time. But a several day outage with no commitment of when it’ll be up again is beyond unacceptable in today’s IT world. Especially from a “major” internet provider.
Herp de Derp
January 23rd, 2013
7:49 pm
I don’t have U-Verse, but of the folks I know who do have it, about half seem to love it and the other half seem to dislike it a lot.
That said, AT&T’s well known for lousy customer service, so that part doesn’t surprise me.
Kat
January 23rd, 2013
7:55 pm
I’m in Brookhaven and we went out today about noon and haven’t been restored. Right now it’s just an inconvenience for us but I hope we get back up soon.
Lorraine Goodman
January 23rd, 2013
8:02 pm
I was scheduled to have AT&T Uverse installed twice and AT&T canceled. I told them to forget it,aybe it was a blessing.